Comparing these statistics with antecedent periods of history, it does not appear that there is evidence of a gradual cessation of warfare and other serious violations of the peace of nations. The table does not exhibit one year from 1815 to the present date in which our own country has not been either engaged in actual hostilities in some part of the world, or in some quarrel or proceeding likely to end in war. Much less does it show a in which all Europe was at single year peace. Nor is the significance of recent wars to be estimated by reference solely to the amount of blood and treasure they have cost; for the struggles of Russia with Turkey, the campaigns of the French in Algeria, Senegal and Lombardy, the conflicts of Great Britain in India and with China, and the aggressions of Spain upon Morocco, are of moment rather as prophetical than as historical facts. Besides, it should be remembered that the period from 1815 to 1854, which has been so erroneously referred to as giving proof of the peacefulness of the modern spirit, began at the termination of the greatest war in the history of mankind; one which by its very severity necessitated a long forbearance from hostilities on a great scale, adding as it did, for example, more than £600,000,000 to the debt of Great Britain, and exhausting France of all her soldiers. Contrasting one age with another, Great Britain seems never to have been so free from war in this century as in Sir Robert Walpole's time. From the treaty of Utrecht in 1713 until 1739, the peace was only broken by occasional hostilities with Spain of no considerable importance, and Walpole's administration is commonly regarded as crowned. by almost unbroken peace. But the nineteenth bears in this respect a still less favourable comparison with the seventeenth century. From the accession of James I. until the civil wars, England may be said to have enjoyed continued peace, for such operations as the expedition to Rochelle scarcely deserve a place in the history of war. Going farther back to the hundred years between the battle of Bosworth and the commencement of the struggle with Spain in Elizabeth's time, considering too the bloodless and theatrical character of Henry the Eighth's campaign, and the unimportance of the military annals of the two next reigns, we hardly exaggerate in saying that England was free from war from the union of the Roses until the equipment of the Spanish Armada. Confining ourselves to English history, it would thus appear that the portion of the nineteenth century already elapsed has been less peaceful than the corresponding period of each of the two preceding ones. And, indeed, it may be doubted whether any prior hundred and twenty years since the Conquest produced so many battles as fought between 1740 and 1860. were A writer, already referred to, remarks that, "in the middle ages, there was never a week without war.' But if we are to reckon all the feuds of the barons and squires in comparing the frequency of medieval with modern hostilities, we must weight the scale of the latter with all the bloody revolutions, rebellions, and insurrections of modern times, and with greater justice in consequence of the tendency of these elements of disorder, peculiar to our era, to produce international strife or war in a wider sphere. It is not an impertinent fact that from 1273 until 1339 England remained throughout at peace with the Continent, if at least the years 1293 and 1297 be excepted; in the former of which there was a collision between the French and English fleets, although their respective countries were not otherwise at war; and in the latter, Edward I. conducted an expedition to Flanders, which ended without a battle. It is true that in this period there were intermittent hostilities with Wales and Scotland. In a military sense the Welsh wars of England hardly deserve more notice than those of the Heptarchy. But there is a point of view from which the conflicts with Wales and Scotland, and those of the Heptarchy, alike possess political importance, and have a bearing upon the question now under consideration, be cause of their analogy to a process which is still going on in Europe, and still giving rise to problems of which no peaceful solution has yet been found possible for the most part,-knots, as it were, which must be cut with the sword. The efforts of the English sovereigns in the middle ages for the annexation of Wales, and the reduction of Scotland to the position of a dependency, were the necessary antecedents of a political unity of Great Britain, corresponding with its natural or geographical unity, and conducive both to the internal peace of the island, and to its security from foreign aggression. It was absolutely indispensable for the civilization of England that the Heptarchy should be consolidated, and it was equally so that Ireland, Wales, and Scotland, should become integral parts of a united kingdom. It is obvious that the causes and chances of war would be infinitely multiplied were these three countries still separate and independent States, and that their union with their more powerful neighbour was requisite for the tranquillity and improvement of all, while it was preceded by struggles which, so far from being peculiar to barbarian or the middle ages, find almost exact parallels in the latest annals of human progress. Nor is it unworthy of remark that Edward I., the ablest prince since the Conquest, applied himself with equal zeal and ambition to the reduction of Wales and Scotland, and to the establishment of law and order throughout England. In like manner the complex movement which in one word, fruitful of mistakes, we call civilization, while bearing over the globe the seeds of future peace, has entailed all the maritime, colonial, and commercial wars of modern Europe. The art of navigation discovered upon the ocean a new element for the practice of hostilities. It was certainly not in a barbarous age, or by barbarous weapons, that the Colonial Empire of Great Britain was established. And what but the commercial spirit of the nineteenth century has carried the cannon of Great Britain into China? Surely it was not |